


Heart Itch

by Not_A_Valid_Opinion



Series: Icarus knew how high he could fly and still, he went higher [1]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), poor Svlad tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 17:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12822639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_A_Valid_Opinion/pseuds/Not_A_Valid_Opinion
Summary: Svlad itched. He felt like scratching his skin off, but dared not make any sudden moves. If they were startled, he’d be shocked, and he hated being shocked. Svlad itched everywhere, but he hated being shocked more than the constant and almost comforting crawling of his skin.In which Slvad suffers through test after redundant test until, finally, the universe tells him its time to move on.





	Heart Itch

**Author's Note:**

> Still have to decide if i want this to be part of a work or if I'll just add chapters. If I add chapters, I'll add tags as I go, and eventually it might become Todd/Dirk, but for right now, Svlad has enough on his plate.

Svlad itched. He felt like scratching his skin off, but dared not make any sudden moves. If they were startled, he’d be shocked, and he hated being shocked. Svlad itched everywhere, but he hated being shocked more than the constant and almost comforting crawling of his skin. 

He’s told he must read the words in front of him and predict the way the sentences end, as though he knew what was going through the mind of the man who wrote the news article seven years prior to his birth. Svlad blinked, and his shoulders twitched, and he held back a sigh and an itch and a scream as he leaned forwards slightly to read the incompleted story he chooses to read over the shocks. 

The article was stupid. Svlad didn’t say so. Instead, he looked to the man ahead of him, eyes tired and arms itching and body still. “A little gun?” he guessed, and the man ahead of him, known to him always as the man ahead of him, rubbed his eyes. 

“Don’t mess around, Icarus. You know the answer.” 

Svlad didn’t. He re-read the article. 

“A… big gun?” 

The man ahead of him wore an expression seen daily that Svlad could still feel his skin crawl at. 

“The article reads that a man was  _ stabbed _ with a  _ blank blank _ . You’re telling me he was stabbed with a  _ gun _ ?” 

Svlad was only telling him what he thought the man ahead of him wanted to hear, but said aloud, he could see, no, that may not be the answer. He looked down at the article, looked at the redacted spaces. A man was stabbed with  _ blank blank _ by the woman he’d imprisoned in his basement for two years. The article says nothing about what happened to the woman afterwards, only that the man died on the way to the hospital. He wondered if the woman was okay, but knew that wasn’t the question he was allowed to be asking himself.

If he used common sense, he figured the answer would be a knife. But there were two slots side by side, where he figured a ‘little gun’ would fit. He supposed if the letters were written big and capaciously, they could fill out both the two redacted spaces, but that would be settling, and the man ahead of him never settles. 

So Svlad said nothing, not knowing what he could say, never knowing what he could say, and awaited the shocks. 

 

He was sore. He was so sore, and itchy, and weak, and resigned. 

He scratches at his arms in the bed they tell him is his, and that he’s come to think of as his, but that he knows doesn’t deserve to be his. He almost can’t bring himself to scratch, because he’s so tired, so used to being tired. But his nails almost robotically scratch his arms, and his eyes begin to slide shut, but not before catching the image of the camera at the side of his room aimed right at him, watching him silently. 

He doesn’t know why they need the camera. It’s not as though he was going to be an interesting show to watch. He just lays there, scratching, and eventually sleeping. What was so intriguing about that? What about him made him a show on a channel on a telly like the one he used to watch with his mother, and his father, and never will again? 

He knew it was because, if he were a show to them, and it was always a ‘them’, a general coterie of judgement and consumerism he hoped himself to never reach, he was a freak show. He was scary, and he was dangerous, and he deserved the camera, because he could hurt them all, if that's what the universe wanted. 

But that wasn’t what the universe wanted. The universe didn’t want anything from him, in here. The universe wanted him to be here, alone, because the universe doesn’t protect him, and the universe pities him but never helps him.

He deserves the camera, but he doesn’t deserves to be where he can’t hear the universe.

He tiredly stops scratching his arms, cradling them instead to his chest, on the bed that doesn’t deserve to be his. 

 

Svlad made a mistake. A dumb stupid mistake that made the man ahead of him proud, and he never wanted the man ahead of him to be proud. 

They made him answer questions he didn’t know the answer to before, many times, daily, yearly, until he hated himself for getting them wrong and wished he actually was psychic, just so that the itching would stop. 

On the day where Svlad stopped counting how many days, how many years it had been since he’d lost the trust of his mother and father, Svlad was cruel. And for that, the man ahead of him was proud. And for that, Svlad truly felt he deserved his heavily guarded, itchy, cold, grey bed. 

They played him a song. 

Svlad recognized this song. For once, Svlad knew the answer. 

He was made to guess the next line to a song he’d heard before, and Svlad didn’t guess. 

He knew the answer. He knew the answer. 

He told them the next line, sung it out, stood up from his chair, pulled the blue off of his face, and told them the line after that. Svlad knew this song. Where did Svlad know this song? 

The man ahead of him had glowing eyes. He watched the boy twirl in the room where he’d been shocked so many times, watched his mouth form a smile he’d not formed for days, for years, watched him sing. 

Svlad was a subject that reacted to music, they must have noted from then on, because they played him the same song for three days in a row. They asked him where he’d heard it, who had played it for him, how he’d heard the lyrics. 

Svlad didn’t remember, so he told them perhaps his mother had played it for him once, perhaps his father had switched stations on the radio and Svlad had heard bits and pieces of a now complete song. He didn’t remember, but he didn’t care, because for three straight days, there was no harsh, thought-like voice yelling out WRONG, WRONG, WRONG when Svlad just wanted quiet, because he had three days of an answer he knew and a feeling of certainty and he hadn’t itched since he heard the song. 

Svlad was an idiot. 

A new man sat in front of him on the fourth day. He wore colour, which was odd to Svlad, because most of the people who Svlad was made to see daily, yearly, wore only the colours Svlad felt. 

“Project Icarus, tell me, where have you heard this song?” Asked the new man ahead of him. Svlad would have held back a sigh, and itch, a scream, but he felt none. He stared blankly at the man, and he simply shrugged. He did not know why this man wore colour, but he did not feel like colour. 

“Project Icarus, use your words,” A disembodied voice called out around him, coming from the walls, from the people watching him that rarely spoke, until now, and Svlad was beginning to feel himself curve inwards. 

“I don’t know, Sir. Might have heard it with my family, back when they had me and were happy for it,” He said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He’d answered this question before. He’d answered all their questions before. 

The new man ahead of him stared at him as though he were a mouse and the man a snake. Svlad didn’t like it one bit. 

“How old are you, boy?” Asked the man. “How long you been here?” 

Svlad didn’t feel it was appropriate to shrug, or to lie, or to guess, or to answer a truthful  _ I don’t know _ , so he sat there quietly, waited for the disembodied voice to answer on his behalf, but the new man spoke again before Svlad could wonder if they’d ever tell him the answer. 

“‘Cause, y’know, this song came out only seven and so month ago, right? And as far as I’m aware,” He looked Svlad over, and Svlad felt struck and swallowed, “you’ve been here quite some time longer than that. And, see, you wouldn’t have heard that song in here, would you have?” 

Svlad slid like a mouse down a snake’s throat. He was powerless. He was silent. 

“Where have you heard this song?” He asked again. 

If Svlad’s arms weren’t bound tight to his skin by his words, he’d be scratching his skin so hard there’d be no Svlad left. 

The boy, for however long he’d been there for, let out a shaky breath he didn’t realize he was holding. 

“I don’t-”

The pain was too much. He’d never finished his sentence. 

Somehow, the itching hurt more. 

 

After that, the tests had gotten harder. They’d been more tight, more secure, more rigorous, more painful. More lonely, too, for no man sat ahead of him, neither colourful nor familiar. The disembodied voice would tell him to figure out the instructions to the puzzle they’d made for him and solve it himself, and then it would just yell, and yell, and yell, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. 

The itch in his arms became worse. It became all he had.

He wondered if the itch was the universe’s way of apologizing, or telling him he deserved its absence. 

 

He hadn’t known it would be the last test he’d ever be forced to complete at Blackwing at the time, but he supposed it was only fitting that it would be. 

Svlad was exhausted. He barely slept anymore, instead opting to look the camera in the side of the room they called his right in its lens, as though he were looking through it to the people watching on the other side. He’d watch the camera, exhausted, angry. He knew he was a freak show to them. Scary, dangerous, deserving his bed, his pain, his exhaustion, anger. He was a monster and he always will be. So he stares at the camera and dares them to look the monster in the eye all night long just to ensure it was still locked in its cage, where it couldn’t hurt them, unless the universe wanted it to. 

Svlad was exhausted, and Svlad was angry. And the tests went on. 

They passed him a news article he’d seen more times than years he’s been in this facility, which he doesn’t know an exact number for, doesn’t even remember his birthday at this rate, his mother’s face, his father’s voice. He doesn’t remember the days he loved them. He only remembers the day he lost them, the day he realized they feared him, the day they had him taken away. 

He misses them, he thinks, but can’t remember why. 

He looks at the news article, and he remembers it, but he still doesn’t know the answer. 

Pretending to think, he rests his head on his hands and drums his fingers on the cold, grey desk. “Uhmmm, large gun?” He guesses, past caring, and he’s shocked, and the voice yells out WRONG, and he doesn’t hear it over the shocks. 

When he’s recovered, a different voice informs him of his failure rates, and orders him to do better, tells him he’s not allowed to leave until he gets at least one redacted word right. 

He is past the point of caring, and instantly settles in for the night, despite this being only the third test of the day, and the day has practically just started. They don’t appreciate this notion and shock him again. 

“Look. I don’t know! I do not know! I have no clue! I am not psychic! It does not work this way and I cannot stress that enough! For the love of whatever god you believe in, if any, just tell me the answer!” Svlad screamed, his voice hoarse and cracked, desperate. 

He fully expected more pain to jolt through him, but when none came, he picked up the article again. He figures one of the words are probably knife, but he uses logic, not the universe, to make that assumption, which defeats the whole point of the test. So he stays silent and waits for a shock or a voice or a pack of guards to grab him. 

“Dirk knife, Project Icarus. The man in the article is stabbed by an escapee with…. A dirk knife. You will be escorted to your fourth test, now; stand by.” 

 

On his way to the fourth test, the sirens went off, and explosions went off, and Svlad’s skin itched and itched and he ran and ran. For the first time, he had an answer that they actually gave him. For the first time, he was running on the floor instead of a treadmill, and he was choosing to run, because the itching in his skin feels like fire, and as he runs it feels like freedom. 

Svlad sees the sun for the first time in so, so long. 

His skin doesn’t itch, but he knows to walk forwards. 

Svlad wonders if this is how the woman in the article felt when she saw the sun, when she stabbed the man with a- 

A dirk knife. 

Dirk. 

He rather liked the sound of that.  


End file.
